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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/26360434">Kitsune</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/danceswithronin/pseuds/danceswithronin'>danceswithronin</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>Legends of Tsushima [1]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Ghost of Tsushima (Video Game)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>All the fox petting, Cute until it's creepy, F/M, Inari Shrines, Kitsune!Jin, Prompt Fic, Secrets, Supernatural Elements, Tooth-Rotting Fluff, Very superstitious, What Does the Fox Say?, writing's on the wall</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-09-08</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-09-20</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-06 06:00:01</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>2</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>4,458</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/26360434</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/danceswithronin/pseuds/danceswithronin</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Yuna is superstitious and Jin thinks it is hilarious. He might also be a liar.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Jin Sakai/Yuna</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>Legends of Tsushima [1]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/series/1915522</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>38</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>126</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>1. Kitsune</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><ul class="associations">
      <li>For <a href="https://archiveofourown.org/users/Streamsofstoriesandcolour/gifts">Streamsofstoriesandcolour</a>.</li>



    </ul><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>Hey it's a prompt fic! If anyone has prompts or pairings or whatever they want me to try and fill, just drop it in the comments and I will do my best to get around to it. :D </p><p>Thanks as always for reading and for comments, I love hearing what you guys think of the story! &lt;3</p><p>This scene is loosely inspired by one of my favorite scenes in one of my favorite movies of all time, Legend: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ivz0aLJjXvQ&amp;t=126s</p><p>(If you haven't seen that movie for the love of God go watch it, you get to see Tom Cruise in more glitter than you've ever seen in your life.)</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>“Yuna, look!”</p><p>Yuna looked up from her thoughts to see what Jin was pointing at. Actually her thoughts had been somewhat focused on the ripple of muscles in Jin’s back under his hakama as she rode slightly behind and to the side of him, so the sound of his voice breaking the tranquil silence of their ride was like a splash of cold water.</p><p>There was a fox standing underneath a gingko tree up ahead, watching them, its pointed ears perk up in their direction, its amber eyes watching them with an almost ancient considering.</p><p>“Oh,” Yuna whispered.</p><p>“Come,” Jin said, dismounting. Yuna furrowed her brow at him. “What are you doing?”</p><p>“Just come!” Jin said without turning back, running towards the fox. As she predicted, the fox turned and bolted in the opposite direction. Yuna took a deep breath and took after Jin, immediately shocked at how quickly both he and the fox could run. She pumped her legs harder, pretending that she had Mongols at her heels to catch up.</p><p>They dashed through the marsh full of blood-red flowers, water splashing up at their feet, the mud trying to suck them down sandals-first. Yuna doing her best to keep up with Jin and the fox, but their agility was supernatural. She watched his cape whipping in the storm wind as they ran, breathing hard and feeling a burning stitch in her side as the fox dodged around a stand of boulders and Jin turned on his heel in a flash, following.</p><p><em>What are we </em>doing? Yuna thought, laughing a little and shaking her head as she followed Jin up onto the boulders. The fox bounded across the rocks and Jin was right at its heels. Yuna caught up but faltered at a particularly wide leap.</p><p><em>What happened to that man who almost fell off a roof in the first half hour I met him? </em>She looked up from the gap to see Jin waiting on the other side for her, grinning. He backed off the edge and held his hands out to her.</p><p>“You can make it,” he said. “I believe in you, Yuna. I won’t let you fall.” If it was any other man, Yuna would have thought that she was being mocked, but Jin’s voice was completely sincere.</p><p>She backed up on the boulder to give herself a little bit of running room, then took the jump, giving herself as much momentum as she could. She landed on the opposite side and skidded into Jin’s waiting arms, softening her landing against his chest, finding herself almost nose to nose with him. His arm had come around protectively to keep her from falling backwards off the rock if she lost her balance. He smiled at her, watching the blood rise in her cheeks.</p><p>“I think you lost your fox,” she said, breathless.</p><p>“No,” Jin replied, smiling. He took her hand and lead her down around the rocks where the fox was sitting up on its hind legs. Waiting for them.</p><p>“What is this, Jin?” Yuna said, even as she held his hand more tightly, following him. She stole a glance at his gently smiling face and felt almost a sense of disquiet come over her, battling with her affection. <em>Is he kitsune? Some kind of spirit? </em>Yuna had heard of folk tales about the inari and youkai and all kinds of supernatural things. As a child she had loved them as a way to escape—as an adult she sought them out. Her belief in them ranged from absolute to not at all. She had never heard of a male <em>kitsune</em> before. But she supposed it would make a lot of sense.</p><p>She started to open her mouth and almost laughed at the absurdity of the question: <em>Are you kitsune, Jin? Is that why the Khan can’t kill you? </em></p><p>Jin led her down around the boulders until he reached a small inari shrine, half-buried in moss. The fox followed him like a dog at his heels and Yuna warred with the desire to reach out and stroke its shining red fur. It looked as soft as a kitten.</p><p>“Here. We have to give thanks.” Jin stood in front of the inari shrine, bowing with deep respect, and Yuna copied his movements, though she found it hard to keep her eyes off the fox that was watching them.</p><p>Jin pulled a flint out of the small satchel at his hip near the sheath of his katana and lit the candles. He had some difficulty in the wind and Yuna moved closer to him to block the wind, helping to cup her hands around the flame. Finally they got the candles lit, and Jin took a small piece of strong-smelling <em>koboku</em> incense from the satchel, lighting it. They watched the wind pull tendrils of it off, like a miniature version of the fires that burned across the island.</p><p>After he had prayed to the shrine, Jin turned to Yuna, smiling. “Sit down.”</p><p>She did, and Jin followed her lead. He held his hand out to the fox and the animal walked up to him with the bizarre combination of a cat’s grace and a dog’s excitement, its tail wagging. It made little yelping sounds under its breath as Jin buried his hand into the soft red fur of its head.</p><p>“It lets you touch it,” Yuna whispered, afraid that if she spoke too loudly, the fox would jump up and dash away. She had never seen one so close. The black markings around its eyes made it look like it had kabuki make-up on.</p><p>“Do you want to?” Jin asked.</p><p>She looked at him. “Will she let me?”</p><p>“Try. Hold your hand out. Be calm.”</p><p>Yuna held her hand out towards the fox, still half-expecting it to bare its teeth at her or run. Instead, it walked over from where Jin was petting it and threw itself in Yuna’s lap like a dog. Jin laughed out loud at her shocked gasp.</p><p>“I think you’re safe.”</p><p>Yuna reached down and stroked the fox’s flank with awed reverence as it grinned up at her. She could feel it panting against her calves and saw where its fur faded into bright snow white at the neck, and the black of a coal at its feet. <em>They’re so beautiful. </em></p><p>Yuna had always wanted a dog as a pet when she was a child, but her mother had forbidden it of course. As she forbade so many other things. The one time she had the audacity to bring a stray puppy home, her mother had thrown it unceremoniously out in the street and threatened to beat Yuna and drown the dog if she went back out after it. She checked for it in the alleys and streets, but never saw it again.</p><p>“How are you doing this?” Yuna asked, looking up at Jin. Her expression was serious.</p><p>“What do you mean?”</p><p>“Jin… normal people can’t pet wild animals,” Yuna said, even as she disproved herself by stroking the fox’s head, giving it gentle scritches behind its ears. Its tongue lolled happily, tail flopping. Jin watched her, leaning back on his hands with his legs crossed. He was wearing only his hakama, not his armor as usual, and he looked strangely at ease compared to how Yuna usually saw him.</p><p>“You’re doing it.”</p><p>“Only because you’re here,” she said, giving into the urge to touch the fox’s brush. The fox leaned forward but didn’t bite her, only touched her hand with a wet black nose before the fox’s tongue darted out like a dog’s, licking her wrist. “You really think that this fox would be this close to me if you weren’t here?”</p><p>“She seems to like you well enough.” Yuna heard the smile in his voice and looked up at him from where she was staring down into the fox’s face. “I do. That’s why I wanted to show you.”</p><p>“Are you <em>kitsune</em>?”</p><p>Jin laughed, the sound of it startling and loud in the quiet of the marsh. Somewhere nearby a flock of birds erupted into the air with a thunderous sound of rustling wings all at once.</p><p>“Don’t make fun of me, Jin.”</p><p>“I’m not,” Jin said, his eyes sparkling as he looked at her. “I’m not making fun of you.”</p><p>“You didn’t answer my question.”</p><p>“I didn’t realize you were being serious,” Jin answered. As he did, a yellow oriole landed on his shoulder, looking at Yuna with a bright, curious expression. She raised her eyebrows at Jin and held her hand out at the bird. <em>And how do you explain that? </em></p><p>“Some people are just good with animals.”</p><p>“Jin, when people say they’re good with animals, they mean they can train dogs well or that cats like them. They don’t mean that they can do…whatever this is.”  </p><p>Jin reached up to his shoulder and held his hand up to it, and the bird hopped down to his fingers easily. He held the bird on his hand in front of him and gently ran two fingers of his opposite hand along its chest, stroking it.</p><p>“I’m not a <em>kitsune</em>, Yuna.” Jin was still smiling when he said it, watching her.</p><p>“Then what are you? A <em>goryō</em>?” She held one the fox’s ears between her fingertips and rubbed it—the fox pushed its head against her belly, staring up at her upside-down.</p><p>“You know my uncle. You knew of my father. You know I’m just a man,” he said, his smile fading a little as he saw how serious she was. “Just Jin.”</p><p>“I know you <em>were</em> a man,” Yuna said. She let the fox’s ear go and shifted her weight to stand. The fox looked mildly put out but hopped down off her lap and walked back over to the other side where Jin sat, sprawling out on the rock like a bored cat. “I don’t know what you are now,” she admitted. <em>And how much of it is what I made you. </em></p><p>“You’ve seen me bleed, Yuna. You’ve carried me. You’ve tended my wounds.” Jin stood up and moved closer to her, the bird fluttering away. He sat beside her and leaning against the rocks until their shoulders were touching. He reached across her lap and took her hand—surprised, she let him. He took her hand and slid it under the fabric of his kimono over his chest to the left side, where his heart beat strong and steady beneath the flesh there.</p><p>“Feel?”</p><p>“Yes,” Yuna whispered, her mouth suddenly dry. Jin looked over at her, his eyes very close again.</p><p>“I’m a man,” Jin repeated, his voice softer. He leaned into her, almost close enough for their noses to touch. “I’m no <em>kitsune</em>, no <em>youkai</em>, no ghost. Do you believe me?”</p><p>Yuna searched his eyes. “I believe you.”</p><p>He clasped her hand where it was flat against the skin of his chest and moved forward, pressing his lips to hers. Yuna sighed and let him do it. He brought his arms around her and she went willingly, moving to straddle his hips as he leaned against the rock. She leaned back from their kiss and had to bite back a laugh at the half-frustrated groan Jin let out when she did.</p><p>
  <em>Yes, you are a man. </em>
</p><p>Jin did nothing, just watched her in silence. <em>Like a wild animal,</em> Yuna thought. She ran her hands across the skin of his jaw and neck, feeling the stubble there, running her hand lower to touch the skin of his chest again, to feel that heartbeat. His skin was scarred with fresh pink healing tissue beneath the red and white fabric, the shirt that Yuna secretly thought made Jin look like a fox himself.   </p><p>“Do you trust me, Yuna?”</p><p>Yuna brought her eyes up from Jin’s chest to his eyes. She studied them for a few seconds before whispering back, “I trust you.”</p><p>Yuna wrapped her arms around him and met his lips again to prove it.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0002"><h2>2. Kamui</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>Jin has a secret.</p>
          </blockquote><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>This was initially going to be a one-shot, but the idea of Jin being secretly supernatural wouldn't leave me alone, so here's the second installment. :D Also known as the chapter where Jin's animal friends go from cute to super creepy.</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Jin had a secret.</p><p>Yuna wasn’t sure what it was—her first thought that he must sneak off to do what men do, drink and whore. Of course, he acted all prim and proper most of the time he was around Yuna, their impromptu kisses at the inari shrine notwithstanding. But that only made Yuna more suspicious. She didn’t know any man who didn’t sleep with whomever he liked, and she heard even monks would sleep with prostitutes at the brothels.</p><p>But it seemed uncharacteristic of Jin, and she didn’t feel like that was only idealistic thinking, either. Yuna hadn’t known him very long, but the idea of him sneaking off from camp to meet a woman—or a man, if the rumors about Ryuzo were to be believed, Yuna didn’t quite have the nerve to ask Jin about it—didn’t quite mesh with what she knew of the former samurai. In fact, any rumors of him sleeping with anyone seemed at odds with what she knew of him. If she didn’t know any better, she swear he’d never even <em>had</em> a woman.</p><p>Yuna didn’t know why he would sneak around her to meet a lover anyway. It wasn’t as if they were together, even though just being close to him was enough to set Yuna’s heart hammering in her chest like she was some teenage girl watching a procession of samurai ride through town.</p><p>At first, when she became aware that he was sneaking off in the middle of the night when he thought she was sleeping, she resolved herself to ignore it. It was none of her business, where he went and who he saw. Her own curiosity aside, he was a lord, and he could come and go as he pleased.</p><p>But as it continued, and she caught him more than once, lying still as if she was asleep while he got up and slipped away in the dead of night, her inquisitive nature got the better of her. It wasn’t just that he was sneaking away, but the way he was doing it.</p><p>So she made up her mind to follow him. It was harder than she’d anticipated. It meant staying up late into the night pretending to sleep, and there was more than one night where she pretended herself right into the real thing, when battle fatigue caught up with her.</p><p>This time she had him.</p><p>They laid down as usual, making small talk until their words trickled away and Jin eventually wished her goodnight, turning away from her in the shadows on the tatami mat. Yuna turned her back to him too, and instead relied on her ears to let her know when he got up. She had to strain to do it, keeping her breath steady and even as if she was asleep. She knew Jin was as almost as silent as an owl when he needed to sneak, and she had to focus all her attention to hear him.</p><p>Eventually, she heard it. The softest rustle of the tatami mat next to her as Jin rolled to his feet. She heard silence fall as he crouched on the balls of his feet beside her, watching her for movement for what felt like an eternity before she heard him moving again.</p><p>His soft footsteps, as quiet as a cat’s, trailed away from her. Instead of opening the temple door where they were resting, Jin climbed up a pillar and through the window on the roof. Yuna turned over just in time to see him slipping out of the open window.</p><p>
  <em>Damn, he’s quick. </em>
</p><p>Yuna gave him a few seconds of lead time, then scrambled up after him, not nearly as graceful (though she’d been practicing). As she came out onto the pagoda roof, she already saw Jin racing away across a field to the south, heading off into the tree line.</p><p>“Damn,” Yuna whispered, despite herself. She slid down the roof as quickly as she could until she found an area that was low enough for her to hang off the edge and drop down. She took off in the direction that Jin headed, trying to move as quickly as she could while staying as silent as possible, pretending that it was a Mongol she was trailing and not Jin.</p><p>She ran into the woods after him, but as soon as she entered the trees, she realized she had lost sight of him in the dense forest. She heard the soft crunching of broken branches to tell of his passage through the brush, but the sound echoed strangely in the woods. Acting on impulse, she headed off in the direction that was closest to where she thought the sound was coming from.</p><p>An autumn chill hung in the air, and the wind whipped through the tree branches, causing them to rustle and muffling the sound of Jin’s passage. It almost sounded like the trees were whispering to each other, and the idea made the hair on the back of Yuna’s neck stand up. She saw a glimpse of Jin far ahead in the trees and moved faster.</p><p>
  <em>What is doing all the way out here? </em>
</p><p>She raced ahead, trying to choose her steps carefully in the dark. Luckily there was a full moon out, and it left just enough light under the trees to keep her from catching her foot on a root or rock.</p><p>Jin came out into a clearing ahead, and Yuna slowed down to quiet her steps and keep him from hearing her follow. The next thing she saw made her breath catch in her throat. She pulled her bow down and nocked an arrow without thinking about it, moving with pure muscle memory.</p><p>It was a moon bear.</p><p>The massive black animal lumbered towards Jin in the moonlight, and she could see the bright crescent of white fur on its chest rippling as it ambled forward with a low growling, snuffling noise. Yuna remembered the bear that had burst out of the abandoned house, attacking Taka, and how Jin had dashed forward like an <em>oni, </em>his blade flashing, and how quickly the bear had dropped.</p><p>In those few seconds before Jin rushed in and saved Taka’s life, Yuna imagined the bear setting on her brother, mauling him to death, and her mind half-convinced her it was real even after the bear lay in a crumpled pile before the shattered shoji door and Jin was flicking its blood from his sword.</p><p>Jin wasn’t unsheathing his sword now.</p><p>Yuna opened her mouth to scream, meaning to shriek out a warning. But Jin simply stood still in the moonlight, like a statue of a man in his white ronin robes, and watched the bear come.</p><p>She drew the arrow back, breathing hard, feeling like her breath was so loud in the stillness that Jin couldn’t possibly help but hear it, but something held her back. The bear was still walking forward, but it wasn’t charging.</p><p>She remembered his words to her at the inari shrine, while she placed her hand over the steady beating vibration of his heart in his chest. <em>Do you trust me, Yuna?</em></p><p>“Yes,” Yuna whispered, almost soundlessly, and lowered her bow.</p><p>Jin took a few steps towards the bear and reached out. Yuna winced, expecting the bear to rear up and take a swipe at him. But instead the bear let Jin place a hand on its broad black forehead, tilting it downward.</p><p>Jin knelt in front of the moon bear, seeming to almost glow in the moonlight, opalescent beneath it. He took its shaggy jaws in his hands as if it was a large dog that was fond of him, and he leaned forward.</p><p>Whispering in the bear’s ear.</p><p>Yuna’s eyes were wide and white and terrified and full of moonlight. Before she knew what she was doing, she turned and ran back in the direction of the temple, not trying to move silently now, branches slapping her in the face as she ran blindly.</p><p>At one point she caught her sandal on the worming, gnarled root of a tree and went sprawling, skinning her knees and glancing her temple off an outcropping of rock. A bright burning raced across her forehead and she felt blood trickling down the side of her face as she scrambled to her feet, sure at any moment the bear would come barreling behind her, crashing behind her with singular, supernatural purpose.</p><p>
  <em>Tsukiyomi, hide my steps. Protect me. </em>
</p><p>She didn’t seem to hear anything coming after her, but it was hard to tell with the thundering <em>taiko </em>pounding of blood in her ears and her whooping breath. After what felt like an eternity, she burst out of the tree line and ran for the temple like a deer with dogs on its tail.</p><p>Yuna didn’t bother with the window this time. She raced around to the front of the temple and pulled the doors open, closing them behind her. She ran her hands through her hair, panting as she stood over their tatami mats, her hands falling to cover her face beneath wide eyes.</p><p>
  <em>What in the name of the gods? </em>
</p><p>It was one thing to see Jin stroke a wild bird, or even a fox. But what she had seen… it was not something meant for humans to see. She had half expected to be struck down for the sight of it, had felt the urge to avert her eyes, to prostrate herself.</p><p>It was not something she was meant to see. It wasn’t something <em>anyone </em>was meant to see.</p><p><em>He could follow me back. </em>She swallowed and hastily wiped blood from the side of her face and smeared it on her yukata, laying back down on the mats and pulling the blanket back over her head, turning her body towards the wall. She tried to visualize a fish hanging in the water column of a stream, fins waving in the current. She willed her breath to be even and steady, even as she felt a fresh trickle of blood run down her head to drip onto the tatami mat.</p><p>There was a noise in the temple. Above.</p><p>
  <em>The window. </em>
</p><p>Yuna felt her whole body tense up and squeezed her eyes closed, as if Jin was a monster that wouldn’t notice she was there as long as she stayed still and quiet and kept her eyes shut. If she couldn’t see him, then he wasn’t there.</p><p>She stayed as still as she could, listening to his soft steps creep closer. She heard him kneel at her side and lay down beside her, lifting up the blanket to slip in at her back. Within only a few moments, his breathing turned even and deep, drifting into gentle snores.</p><p>Yuna could almost believe it had all been some kind of surreal nightmare… but she could faintly smell the bear on him. A rank, low, feral smell that made her bite back a scream.</p><p>She heard Jin’s voice in her head like a ghost: <em>I’m a man. Do you believe me? </em></p><p><em>No, </em>Yuna thought, and kept her eyes closed. She didn’t think that sleep would come again, not with her head pounding and the faint reek of the moon bear like a phantom wild animal that slept between them, but somehow in the aftermath of her spent adrenaline, she drifted off all the same.</p><p>**</p><p>When Yuna woke, she found the bed cold. Jin was gone.</p><p><em>He left me. </em>Yuna wasn’t entirely surprised, but she felt her heart lurch just the same. She had almost convinced herself that it didn’t hurt when the temple doors opened and Jin walked through, looking as if nothing at all was amiss.</p><p>“I went and fed the horses,” he said. Yun saw that he watched her carefully, as if he could see something of her thoughts on her face. “Figured we’d get an early start on the way to Kubara.”</p><p>“Oh… good. I was wondering where you went.” She stood up and gathered their things, turning her back to him. She could feel her watching him for a few moments, his dark eyes feeling like they were pricking the skin of her neck before he withdrew, closing the temple door behind him.</p><p>Yuna let out a breath she didn’t know she’d been holding.</p><p>When she had their things gathered, she met him out at the horses. She flinched back when he reached up and touched her forehead, his fingertips soft and gentle.</p><p>“What happened there?”</p><p>She followed his fingertips with her own. “Oh, just fell in the dark. Clumsy.” It wasn’t a lie, and she hoped it didn’t sound as cagey to Jin as it did to her own ear.</p><p>“Hm,” Jin said, his face unreadable. “Does it hurt?”  </p><p>“No, it’s fine,” Yuna said, turning away from him to pack her saddlebags and mount Naoki, unable to look him in the face. “Let’s go.”</p><p>He mounted up on Kaze and gazed at her a moment, seeming about to speak, and then seemed to think better of it. He clucked his tongue and urged Kaze into a trot up the road. Yuna followed.</p><p>**</p><p>They came on the slaughtered Mongolian patrol at mid-morning. The kill was fresh, and Yuna felt her blood turn to ice as she saw the large clawed prints pressed deep into the grass and mud around the dead Mongols. One of them had an arm ripped clean from its socket, bone so white it almost glowed amidst the gore.</p><p>Another of the men was disemboweled, his bluish intestines spread across the grass behind the trail of blood where he had tried to crawl away. Another still was missing most of his face, the features sheared away by one giant sweeping claw.</p><p>Naoki started and backed up away from the carnage, ears flattening. He snorted in distress, eyes rolling.</p><p>“A bear did this,” Yuna said, her tongue feeling like a dry wad of cotton in her mouth as she said it, her voice husky.</p><p>“They’re hunters,” Jin said. “It didn’t work out too well for them though.”</p><p>“Seems as if the forest spirits want the Mongols to leave the island as badly as we do,” Yuna replied, watching Jin’s face as she did, and she thought she saw a flash of fear in his eyes at her words before his face smoothed into a neutral, serious expression.</p><p>“One less patrol we have to slaughter ourselves,” he answered shortly, catching her gaze for just a few searing seconds before he started Kaze moving again.</p><p>Yuna followed, her heart pounding, walking Naoki past the massacre. </p><p>As she did, she imagined Jin bathed in moonlight, his lips pressed to the ear of the bear.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>Kamui - name of the bear god worshipped by the Ainu people</p><p>Tsukiyomi - kami of the moon</p><p>I ran into SO MANY BEARS attacking Mongol patrols, I just had to come up with a supernatural justification for it.</p>
        </blockquote><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Yuna: Jin... are you a kitsune?</p><p>Jin: HAHAHAHANOOFCOURSENOTWHYWOULDYOUTHINKTHAT 😅</p><p>Kitsune: A Japanese shape-shifting fox spirit that takes the shape of a human in order to interact with them.<br/>Goryō: A member of the Japanese nobility who is martyred and comes back to haunt their killers as revenge, usually by invoking disease or storms<br/>Youkai: A Japanese spirit or demon</p></blockquote></div></div>
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